


New Beginnings

by Erica_T



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fluff, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 20:52:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9256820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erica_T/pseuds/Erica_T
Summary: Moving from the big city to a small town in Connecticut seemed like a great idea.  It's quiet, unassuming and the landlady is adorable.  Steve likes it more than he thought it would.And then November.  And it turns out that his neighbor across the hall is really into Christmas music, much to his chagrin.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aenaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aenaria/gifts).



> I seem to be running chronically late this season, which is why this is being posted late. I signed up for the exchange late too, so at least there's symmetry. 
> 
> This is for Aenaria, who Mcgregorswench said when I signed up was not having an awesome day, so I do hope that this fluffy thing helps to pick up any spirits that are still down :)

Steve was not a picky person, in general. When you grew up having to make do with what you had, however much or little, it didn’t take a lot to be relatively content with life. 

When he’d moved his personal base of operations from New York to a tiny town in Connecticut after Tony managed to clear their names with the government, he was happy enough with the little one bedroom apartment in the top floor of an old, enormous house. The house had once been the ‘Manor home’ of the town, and the landlady was the picture perfect definition of sweet little old lady, she had to be in her seventies if a day, and she loved to talk to everyone. She lived on the premises, in one of the ground floor apartments. The story that he got when he first spoke with her about renting one of the available apartments was that when her husband died, she had a lot of money and nothing to do with it. She didn’t need to be rattling around in their house all by herself, and they never had children. So, she purchased the converted house, moved into one of the more accessible apartments. She still owned her previous house, she rented it to families who would use the space, and she enjoyed the company of the people who lived in the apartment house. 

There were six apartments in total; two per floor, a younger couple lived in the apartment across from Mrs. Abernathy, and the second floor housed a man in his forties who worked in accounting, and across the hall was a younger woman who kept odd hours because she worked at a local pub. 

When he’d moved in, he’d had his choice of the upper apartments. Both were a single bedroom, but were what Mrs. Abernathy termed the ‘jewels of the house’ because she had had the ceilings removed and turned the attic space into a loft space as part of the living area. They hadn’t been rented out yet due to the construction, and because they were pricier than the other apartments. 

In between taking missions for the Avengers, on the down low, he’d been living there quietly for six months. 

And then November came.

His neighbour across the hall had moved in while he was away on a mission in October. He understood from Mrs. Abernathy that she had come to town with her employer and that she might also keep odd hours, and he had been quick to assure her that he would have no issues with that. 

He hadn’t met her yet, but he also hadn’t really met anyone else in the building either, so that wasn’t unusual. 

But she was apparently a person whom Tony Stark would probably have a lot in common with, because it seemed like the morning after Veteran’s day, she started to play Christmas music. 

The one year that he’d stayed in the Tower over Christmas had been enough to turn any sane person against Christmas music in general, it had played in every elevator, hallway and public room, a different song in each it seemed. If that wasn’t enough, the music that Tony had played in his own labs was an affront to all human nature, in Steve’s opinion. 

On the morning after Veteran’s Day, the first thing he heard when he woke up was the sound of rock music banging out Oh Come All Ye Faithful to the same tune that he was absolutely positive Tony had played once after he’d had a conversation with Ross, something about not taking it anymore. 

Fortunately, Steve had an appointment in New York, and spent most of the day not in the house, and when he came back that evening, the apartment across the hall was quiet again.

The morning after that, he woke up to sound of teenagers singing after inhaling helium, interrupted by the sound of a man shouting at someone named Alvin. The morning after that it was the sound of some woman wailing about all she wanted for Christmas at a decibel that he was sure was not compatible with the human ear. 

After two weeks of varying degrees of awful music, he met Natasha for breakfast. She was, characteristically, unsympathetic.

“Why don’t you just ask her to turn it down? Or to hold off playing it until whatever you might consider a reasonable time?” 

Steve sighed and drank his coffee.

“She’s actually not playing it that loudly. It’s what normal people would consider a reasonable volume. It’s just that… well, my hearing is as enhanced as the rest of me, so for me it just seems like it’s loud. And I’m trying to keep a low profile, so if I go over ranting about her music, which she’s playing at a regular volume….” 

“You’ll either look like a raving lunatic, or start raising some suspicions.” 

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Well. You have two options. One is sacrifice your dignity for the sake of your ears, and two, sacrifice your ears for the sake of your dignity.”

“Thanks Nat, you’re a really big help.” 

“I try.” 

Steve shook his head and tucked into the pancake platter that the waitress brought him. 

“It might not be all bad, you know, talking to her. She sounds interesting just from her music tastes alone and she might be pretty.” 

“I thought you’d stopped trying to set me up on dates.” 

“Not until you actually go on one.”

“I did.”

“Kissing Sharon Carter under an overpass in Europe does not count as a date.” 

“I took her to get a drink after Peggy’s funeral.”

“Still does not count. Besides, nothing actually came out of that, did it?”

Steve shook his head. If Sharon hadn’t been spying on him when they first met, and if she hadn’t turned out to be Peggy’s niece, they might have been able to make something work, even with all of the insanity that his life became in the immediate aftermath of the Accords. But, as it was, by the time he’d worked up the nerve to actually kiss her it was, as she said, late. 

“Look, Steve, when you decided to move out here, I thought it was a great idea, to get yourself some distance, finally have a chance to have something that resembles a real life. I mean, you know that if Clint can make that work for him, there is no reason that you can’t. Happy endings aren’t things that just happen though, you have to actually work for them. And you won’t get anywhere if you don’t take chances and meet new people. Knock on her door; you never know who you’ll find.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but he gave her a conciliatory grin. 

“Yes, mother.” 

The smack to the head she gave him was still worth it. 

*

In the end, he didn’t have to knock on her door. About a week after his breakfast with Natasha, and another week of music that he had to suffer through, he found an attractive brunette girl fighting with the mailbox for apartment six and was losing the battle spectacularly, accompanied by the most inventive use of foul language that he’d ever heard. He was sure that she wasn’t speaking English at some points. 

When she reared back as if she was about to punch the thing, he stepped in.

“I, uh, I find that it works best when you don’t have the key all the way the lock. They’re new, so they’re a little finicky.” 

She turned a baleful stare at him and lowered her arm, wiggling her key out ever so slightly before turning it, successfully. She grinned at him when it popped open.

“You are a genius of epic proportions, dude, thanks.” 

“It’s not a problem. I had the same problem when Mrs. Abernathy first had them put in.” 

“Still, thanks. I don’t get mail, usually, but with Christmas coming, I have distant relatives and friends that may or may not send actual Christmas cards, so I have to check now. My name’s Darcy, by the way.” 

“Steve.” 

She shook his hand vigorously. 

“You’re in five, right? Mrs. A was expounding on your many virtues when I was moving in. She said that if you’d been in town you’d have been a great hand helping me get my beast of a sofa into the apartment. I managed to buy a Dirk Gently sofa, apparently. At least where this apartment is concerned. Fortunately we didn’t have to resort to time travel or punching holes in the walls to get it up the staircase, just breaking the souls of underpaid college students.” 

Steve couldn’t help it, he had to laugh. He didn’t know what a Dirk Gently was, and when he asked, she gasped in mock horror. 

“Sir, the least that I can do to repay you for your assistance is to lend you the books. Come with me.”

He gamely followed her up to their floor, and had to hide a smile when she started swearing at the lock on her door before it opened for her. 

“Whoa.” He muttered when he followed her across the threshold of the apartment door. 

Steve kept his living spaces pretty clean. He was used to living spartan, even the minimal furniture that he had right now was more than he’d ever had in his lifetime, barring the months spent in the Tower with every convenience a clap of the hands away. 

Literally. Tony was going through what Pepper affectionately called a ‘phase’. Eventually, he was convinced (coerced, threatened, forced) to remove that particular added feature from JARVIS’ active systems. The jury was still out on exactly whose technique had won out, Steve figured it was either Pepper or Natasha. Or both. 

Darcy did not seem to be of the same school of thought. At least, not when it came to holiday decorating. It looked like Christmas had gotten drunk and threw up all over the inside of her apartment. 

She seemed to have every available surface covered in some kind of Christmas decoration, bows, ribbons, wreathes, tabletop displays, you name it, it was there. Her windows were covered in decals that cleverly depicted little wintery scenes. There were Santa Claus’s and elves, including one that looked very old fashioned that was perched on a bookshelf. There was a stuffed something that looked like a penguin with a loaf of bread for a nose wearing a pair of antlers sitting on a chair with a small stuffed pig, a frog and a bear that were all wearing festive outfits. 

Steve had to physically restrain himself from cringing.

“Kind of early for Christmas decorations, isn’t it?” He asked. From wherever it was that she was retrieving the promised book from, Darcy laughed.

“No such thing in my book. Around my house, the Christmas stuff comes out ridiculously early. I love Christmas.”

“I see. And Christmas music, huh?

“Naturally.” She reappeared, holding a set of three books, and she tilted her head, a small frown creasing her eyebrows. “Wait, has my music been bugging you? You should have said that it was too loud!”

“Oh, it’s not, it’s….”

“Now I look like an inconsiderate jerk of a neighbor, especially since I’ve been playing all the ridiculous music.”

“Ridiculous music?”

“Yeah, I always play all of the stupid or crazy Christmas music first to get it done with, I mean, it’s fun and all, but I’m not going to play Twisted Sister on Christmas Day, you know. I start playing the nicer music closer to Christmas.”

“Oh.” Steve felt marginally better that her music tastes didn’t run to the extremes of the music she’d been playing in general. “It’s actually fine, it’s not really that loud….”

“Ugh, now I wish I’d been able to go with Jane and Thor, of course I manage to make a fool out of myself with the hot neighbor, and….”

“Thor?”

All of a sudden, she stopped talking, and she took a step backwards. 

“…Yes, my boss’ boyfriend’s name happens to be Thor. No biggle.” She shrugged and shuffled her feet and held out the books in her arms. “Here, the promised books, would you look at the time….” 

“Thor wouldn’t happen to be about 6 feet, blonde and carry a big hammer, would he?”

Her jaw dropped and she stared at him.

“Uh….”

“Wears a cape, calls thunderstorms, flies around. Occasionally leaves big Nordic symbols burned into the ground when Heimdall transports him to and from Asgard?”

“The public doesn’t know about Heimdall.” 

She backed up about three giant steps and had stuck her hand in her pocket. Fortunately, Steve wasn’t an idiot, and he knew what she carried on her person, assuming that this Darcy was the same legendary shield sister that Thor had told him about during one of their revels. 

“No, but all of the Avengers do, Miss Lewis. It’s nice to meet you, I’m Steve Rogers.”

“Rogers…as in Captain Steve Rogers? Captain America, Steve Rogers?” 

“One and the same.” He grinned at her, and she boggled back at him. 

“Seriously? Jane moves us to the smallest town in the world ‘For science!’ and I wind up living next door to an American icon and global hero? C3PO would probably give me some ridiculous odds about that happening, but I don’t have a head for math. What on earth are you doing here?”

Steve shrugged and skimmed over the titles of the books in his hands.

“After Tony smoothed things over, it still didn’t seem to be a great idea to be kicking around a major city, even if most people don’t really see me if I’m not doing anything particularly Captain America like. I thought it best to find a smaller, less conspicuous place to live in between missions. This town was the top of the list. Close enough to New York for when I need to go meet with Tony, but far enough away that I can…well….”

“Live?”

“Something like that.” 

“As towns go, this has been a great place. Jane moved us out here because she’s working on the next stage of her research, something about the sky around here is very conducive. I like it because I can see the stars.” 

Steve had to agree. 

“Listen…I need to be going, but thanks for the books, I’ll return them to you when I’m done?”

“Great! Enjoy them, I always do.”

*

As with most things, something came up that kept him from seeing Darcy for a few weeks. He finished the books quickly enough, and enjoyed them as much as she had suggested he would. But then of course, there was a call out and he was out of town for the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas.

It was a nasty conflict, and it took much longer to get through than any of them had anticipated. What should have taken only a couple of days extended to almost three weeks. 

It was Christmas Eve by the time that he dragged himself up the two flights of stairs to his apartment. It was quiet in the house, even Mrs. Abernathy seemed to have retired already, he wasn’t even sure how late it was. 

After a shower and scouring his refrigerator for anything that was remotely edible and coming up empty, he heard music coming from across the hall. 

Unlike the kind of music that she had been playing before, this music was amazing. He recognized the melody, The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy was a tune that he’d recognize anywhere. But the arrangement of it was like nothing like he’d ever heard before. It was very rock and roll.

Steve’s eyes landed on the set of books sitting on his coffee table and came to a decision. Collecting them up, he left his apartment and knocked on the door opposite. 

It opened in seconds, to Darcy’s wide eyes and bemused smile.

“Steve! Haven’t seen you around here in a while, come in.” She opened her door wider and stepped aside to allow him to pass. He held out her books for her to take. 

“I finished these a couple of weeks ago, but then there was a callout. I just got back.”

“Ugh, I don’t even want to know what your refrigerator looks like. Come on, I have food.” 

She headed further into the apartment, which seemed to have sprouted more Christmas decorations from the last time that he’d been in it, including a large tree in the corner of her living room. He made a face, shifting the Christmas stuffed animals on a chair so that he could sit when she beckoned him to.

“You’re not much of a Christmas person, are you?” She asked when she came in from the kitchen with a pizza box and a couple of mugs of hot chocolate. 

“What gave me away?”

“The look of abject horror on your face when you were in my apartment the first time. I didn’t say anything because I was too busy being horrified that I was the loud obnoxious neighbor to comment on it, besides, it wasn’t really my business. But, now you’ve willingly come into my apartment, on Christmas Eve, so if you’re willing to subject yourself to me, I feel comfortable asking you about it.”

Steve sighed deeply and helped himself to a slice of pizza from the box that she’d set in front of him. 

“It’s not that I dislike Christmas. It’s just that, what it’s become is so far from what it was when I was child, I don’t even recognize it. Growing up, what we considered a good Christmas was any year that we had a roof over our heads and food on the table. My ma would scrimp and save the whole year to be able to buy something decent for Christmas dinner. Some years, my ma and Bucky’s ma would combine resources and we’d spend Christmas together. It was enough, to spend the day with friends and family, we didn’t need Christmas to be decorated in flashing lights and gleaming paper.”

“The commercialism has kind of ruined it, hasn’t it? And I suppose that my Christmas vomit of an apartment would look a bit like a commercial, on the surface.” 

“It was a bit of a surprise, yes.” 

She nodded, and she picked up the stuffed pig from where he’d placed it on the floor. 

“Miss Piggy was a gift from my mother when I was little. Kermit and Fozzie too. These,” she picked up the stuffed penguin with the giant nose and an orange cat-thing that he hadn’t seen before, “are Opus and Bill, from Bloom County. You should read that too. My dad had all of the comic collections, when I was growing up, and these were his. All of my decorations are decorations from when I was a kid.” 

Steve nodded, not quite sure where she was going with it. The music changed to a song about an old city bar, solemn but also uplifting in an odd way. 

“They died when I was in my first year of college. The Christmas decorations are the only things that I keep with me, everything else is still locked up in their house, waiting until I’m grown up enough to think about staying in one place, but at Christmas, I put up all of their decorations because I still love Christmas, and the decorations remind me of the happy times that we had as a family. I can’t have them back, but I can keep their memories alive.”

Suddenly, the overabundance of Christmas in her apartment made sense. And it didn’t seem nearly so overwhelming, now that he understood more about it. 

“You don’t have any other family?” 

She shook her head. 

“Only child. I have some extended family in other states, my grandfather on my dad’s side lives in Montana, a few cousins on my mother’s side in Iowa. But these days the closest I have to family is Jane and Thor.”

“Where are they? You said the last time that they were gone.” 

“Asgard. I think. There was something going on and Thor thought he might need Jane’s help. I couldn’t go. For one, there’s an abundance of flunkies on Asgard who can fetch and carry as well as I can, and Thor only has passenger space for one. I didn’t mind too much, I won’t be missing my parents as much here.” 

“But you’re still by yourself.” 

“No I’m not. I’m here with you.” 

Steve smiled at her, and raised his cup of hot chocolate to her. 

“This music is nice.” 

“Trans-siberian Orchestra. They bring a whole lot of meaning back into Christmas. I told you I save the good stuff for Christmas Eve.” 

“That you did. Listen, what are your plans for tomorrow?”

“I have a turkey and a pumpkin pie that are going to be cooked and eaten with gusto.”

“Do you want some company for that?” 

She grinned at him, and this time she raised her cup to him, meeting his eyes over the rim of her mug. 

“Captain, I think this is the beginning of a great relationship.”

**Author's Note:**

> I noticed, before I was finished writing, that someone else got the same prompt that I was writing for, so I have purposefully not read that story before posting mine. If there are any similarities, they are entirely coincidental. 
> 
> Also, this is not beta read, so if there are any errors, they are mine alone.


End file.
